Book Review: Walking the Divide — A Tale of a Journey Home

Walking the Divide — A Tale of a Journey Home, is a unique combination of reality and fiction. It is a fictionalized narration of the life of Syed Sardar Ahmed, specifically his childhood and young adulthood in undivided India and his experience of partition.

This story is curated based on multiple in-depth interview sessions with Syed Ahmed. It is a story that anyone whose family migrated during the 1947 partition will be able to relate to, as there is a whole generation that carries that trauma. However, not many families had the foresight to document it for the coming generations.

Syed Sardar Ahmed was born in his maternal grandfather, Justice Khwaja Mehmood Hosain’s house in Delhi. His’s paternal family was settled in Kharkhoda in East Punjab’s district Rohtak. Syed Sharif Ahmad, his father continued his family’s legacy of managing his lands and farming.

The narrative starts with the announcement of Syed Sardar Ahmed’s birth, the eldest of four brothers, and continues to paint a clear image of his family’s lifestyle, childhood, time at Aligarh Muslim University and the moment of truth that required him and his family to leave behind all they knew and leave for the new found country, Pakistan.

At the time of partition, once the family made the decision to migrate, it was his mother Riffat Bano’s last minute decision that ended up resulting in his survival. The rest of the family (entire immediate family and a large section of his extended family) were martyred during the violence. After crossing over to Pakistan and not knowing the fate of his family, he went back to find them soon after.

His story is of courage to put it mildly. At the young age of 21 he suffered a trauma that no one can even image and yet at no point his personality takes on a bitterness that would be a natural reaction for many. Every obstacle life threw his way, Syed Ahmed braced it head on, dusted himself up and continued his life without giving up on optimism. This enabled him to not just survive in the new country but thrive and built his own family. For me this was the crux of this biographical — historical fiction narrative.

The writing style is fast paced and the storyline is interlaced with narrations from the interviews, making reading Walking the Divide a very visual experience as well.

As mentioned earlier, this book is a curation and not authored. This was a choice Halima Khan made herself. As she writes in the opening note of the book, “For years, I have dreamt of narrating historical events in the way I thought they should be told: complex, human-centric stories with unique plots that ‘impact’ us even today. It is, in fact, emotions that train us in the art of being human.

“The study of emotions during the Partition 1947 is a fascinating topic, and we approach this significant historical event from different angles. This book testifies the importance of emotions in a factual narrative, nurturing empathy and enhancing our social and emotional selves.”

Halima Khan, has a Masters in Communication Studies and English Literature and has always been naturally drawn to the intrigue that the subject of history offers. She is recognized for advocating digital disruption, her contributions to a paradigm shift in communication strategy in diverse global markets with increased levels of engagement, connectivity, activism and, above all, a higher valuation on transparency. In her free time she has written for multiple leading publications and is working on translating an anthology of an early 19th century manuscript about altruism and Sufism. Khan is also interested in deep diving into children’s publishing as well.

Originally published at https://pk.mashable.com on October 15, 2021.